Finalist 2010

31 December 2014

It's the last post of 2014, a very busy year for beer and for Irish beer in particular. New breweries popped up all over the place and I paid overdue visits to Carlow Brewing, Porterhouse and Galway Bay. Dublin has been a little slow to catch up with the rest of the country but I'm expecting that to be somewhat rectified by the end of next year. The slew of winter seasonal beers has been bigger than ever and, for the second year in a row, Eight Degrees has released a trilogy of strong brews. One of them is a re-run of last year's Imperial Stout but the others are brand new and I caught up with them when they went on tap in The Norseman.

First up, a 7.2% ABV Belgian Dubbel. It's the appropriate shade of chestnut red and poured quite clear, though not completely. It's big on banana esters and heavy on the caramel too for an unsubtly sweet boozy banoffi effect, the heat rising to a slightly off-putting hint of marker pens at the finish. Thankfully the heat and markers don't build and the end result is a reasonably decent take on the dubbel style. While I got a little bit of a savoury yeast bite in the flavour, I suspect that this would be even more present in the bottled version and would help balance the intense sweetness. It's certainly one that will be interesting after a few years' maturation.

Eight Degrees wowed us in spring with The Full Irish IPA (and not just because of that photo) and have followed it up with a double IPA version named, topically, Double Irish. I didn't get much of an aroma from it, but that could have been the glass: those trumpet-shaped half-pints really should be banished from decent beer bars. Cut grass eventually wafted out of it when I'd drank down far enough. On tasting, the bitterness strikes first and while the flavour is complex, it's not a fruity one. There's everything else, mind: dank oily resins, grassy sharpness and a mouth-watering dry spicing. While carrying the full weight of its 9% ABV it's not at all sugary. It's a little more grown-up and serious than Ireland's other double IPAs and you can decide for yourself whether or not that's a good thing.

And speaking of comparisons, with all of my beer reviews done for the year, that means it's time for:

The Golden Pint Awards 2014

Best Irish Cask Beer: Full Sail
What happens when you take an already strong and hoppy pale ale and then dry hop it as far as physically possible. This is a face melter that goes through hoppy and out the other side. I'm hoping the expanded capacity at Galway Bay will make it a more regular sight.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Black Boar
We’re not worthy. Oh wait, yes we are. Where the hell has this been until now, White Hag? A silky knock-it-back 9% ABV stout that's so easy to drink they had to name it after a dangerous animal to remind us of the risk. At the opposite end of the hydrometer, a major tip of the hat has to go to Trouble Brewing for Graffiti: more of this, and this sort of thing, please.

Best Irish Bottled or Canned Beer: Independent Pale Ale / Dublin Brewer IPA
I first drank this way back in February but have been caning most of it under its Dublin Brewer guise at The Larder. I didn't realise they're the same beer but I have it on good authority that they are. Another big blousey whack of hops: invigorating, refreshing and great with a feed.

Best Overseas Draught Beer: Het Uiltje G&T Radler
Wiper & True's Mosaic pale ale was a major contender in the pupil-dilating stakes this year, but the Dutch contract brewers take the prize for me. All the wonderful things about my two favourite drinks in a single package. It's quite possibly the oddest beer I drank this year, and perhaps that alone deserves recognition.

Best Overseas Bottled or Canned Beer: Black Eyed King Imp
The second imperial stout to take a gong, but it couldn't be more different from Black Boar. BrewDog's limited edition special has a convoluted back story but when you meet it it's entirely integrated: one piece of warm, sumptuous liquid comfort.

Best Collaboration Brew: Crushable Saison
There have been lots of great Irish collaborations this year, thinking of Goodbye Blue Monday and Horn8's Nest in particular. But I'm giving this one to the Americo-Belgian saison made by Tired Hands and De La Senne because it best represents what both countries are great at, which is a good thing for collaboration beers to do.

Best Overall Beer: Het Uiltje G&T Radler
It has to be the weirdo, I'm afraid. That's just how I roll. But you knew that. Seriously, though: drink this beer and tell me it isn't amazing.

Best Irish Brewery: Eight Degrees
The same winner as last year, with no qualms at all because, while 2013 Eight Degrees was excellent, 2014 Eight Degrees surpassed it with a never ending stream of daring hop-forward beers. As the Irish microbrewing industry expands, the issue of quality -- and whether newcomers are up to scratch -- is raised again and again. Anyone looking for a benchmark on what quality tastes like can grab a handful of whatever the newest Eight Degrees releases are. A very honorable mention goes to Trouble Brewing for excellent beers reasonably priced: everything that's required of a local brewery.

Best Overseas Brewery:Siren
There was no particular outstanding beer that won this for the Berkshire brewery, but they kind of insinuated themselves into my drinking this year, in locations as diverse as Rome, Barcelona, Edinburgh, Bristol and my own kitchen: wherever top-notch beer is served, basically. A varied range of styles and all of it very good indeed. Word has it that importation into Ireland is imminent, which is great news.

Pub/Bar of the Year:57 The Headline
The Norseman ran it pretty damn close, both of them having taken the mantle from the Bull & Castle as ground zero for Dublin's beer obsessives. If pushed I'd say The Norseman probably has a better beer offer, but the quiet, comfortable neighbourly feel of The Headline makes it a better pub, which is what this prize is about. My top international finds this year were Open Baladin in Rome and The Bag o' Nails in Bristol, but neither is a 20-minute downhill stroll from my front door, so they lose out there.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2014:Alfie Byrne's
With JD Wetherspoon totally dropping the ball on the cask ale front, there aren't very many candidates. Alfie's opened in February and then we had a long wait for The 108 and The Back Page, which both appeared in late autumn. Alfie's gets a bit of stick because, through no fault of its own, it's a hotel bar. But the staff are great, the draught selection always includes something inspiring, and whereas you might see a lack of "atmosphere", I see a choice of places to sit. Away from you for a start, if you're going to whinge.

Beer and Food Pairing of the Year: Venison & Ale Pie and Leann Folláin
Always a tricky one for me as conscientious beer and food pairing is really not my thing. But down at The Pieman on Crown Alley a while back they had a venison and red ale pie on special, which I ate with a bottle of O'Hara's Leann Folláin, and it was lovely, and amazing value for a tenner. So there's my nomination.

Beer Festival of the Year: Quartiere In Fermento
Borefts was fantastic as always; The RDS September festival was huge and did not have a bad beer at it, that I tasted. Franciscan Well Easter Festival also took things to the next level this year. But the charming random oddness of the Wallace winebar chain's celebration of Italian beer gets my vote for 2014's festival highlight.

Supermarket of the Year: Fresh, Smithfield Square, Dublin 7
As usual I did very little supermarket beer shopping, but I did pick up the odd bottle or two in Fresh. They do seem to keep a good range of locals and quality imports in stock.

Independent Retailer of the Year:Martin's of Fairview
I was wowed on my first visit to this northside offy: a fantastic range, all nicely spread out for ease of browsing. I still buy most of my beer in DrinkStore, but I will be back to Martin's.

Online Retailer of the Year:The Homebrew Company
It doesn't say this category has to be about beer does it? Anyway, I don't buy beer online, and I do like the service from HBC, so they get this Golden Pint.

Best Beer Blog or Website:The Beer Cast
I am not alone in commending Richard for his forensic unravelling of the bullshit that Scottish brewers Brewmeister cloaked their brand in. The whole saga made for fascinating reading as well as demonstrating the real practical benefit of this blogging lark. Tremble in fear, ye quacks and charlatans. A pat on the back and a jolly-well-done goes to Mr Brissenden for his sweetly crafted observations on the production end of brewing, and to Belgian Smaak which has done fantastic work documenting rural Ireland's new breweries this year.

Best Beer App:BeoirFinder
And while Belgian Smaak has been tearing around the country, I rarely do. However, it's comforting to know that BeoirFinder is there if I end up somewhere unfamiliar and in need of a decent beer.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitter:Chris Hall
We all want witty and informative, and thankfully there's plenty of it out there in the beery tweetosphere. Chris has been on top of it more than anyone in 2014, which is why I invite him to take a bow and receive my Johnson.

Best Brewery Website/Social Media:White Gypsy
Lots of current information on what's available and where to buy it, plus some lovely pictures of the brewery's hop garden, White Gypsy were really making the most of their Twitter account this year.

And that's your lot. Thanks as always to Andy Mogg and Mark Dredge for devising the Golden Pints and to everyone in the beer brewing, selling and commenting industries, especially here in Ireland, for making 2014 the busiest and most interesting year of my drinking career. See you in 2015 for the next round.

29 December 2014

A chance encounter with an American visitor to Dublin (cheers Jason!) left me with this bottle of Sculpin IPA from San Diego's Ballast Point. It's a beer I knew only by reputation and it's always fun to get hold of those.

It's surprisingly pale for an American IPA: I tend to expect them to be more on the orange-amber side, but this is a bright blonde, only tinted slightly with red. The carbonation is high, piling up a stiff meringue of a head on the top. A promise of acidic lemon rind is how the aroma begins, though there's a contrasting hint of sticky toffee behind it. Its texture is very heavy, the gas having to force its way out through the viscous body. At just 7% ABV it could easily pass for higher.

Bitterness is the centrepiece of the taste: quite a metallic brassy tang enhanced by a pure citrus sharpness. The toffee comes later and lasts longer. I guess it's supposed to be there for balance, but putting this sort of weighty malt sugar next to the hop harshness does not make for balance. It's more like the two flavours are competing with each other.

It's certainly an invigorating beer, a real wake-up call to the palate, but it's by turns too bitter and too sickly for it to be one I'd go running back to.

25 December 2014

Merry Christmas! I hope Santa brought you everything you wanted. Or at least what you deserved. Some seasonal beers from Belgium today.

First up is Hibernatus, from the makers of Lupulus. No style is offered other than Bière d'Hiver, and at 9% ABV and an opaque black, I'll accept that. There's lots of burnt toast, tart damsons and sticky treacle in the flavour, not the heavy comforting sweetness I had been expecting. It does have a warmth, but it's a bitter sort, not really warming as such. If you want your winter beer to be all spiced and cosy this isn't the one for you. But if you like a bit more edge to proceedings, a spikier sort of Christmas, then Hibernatus is the way to go. I imagine Brouwerij van Klomp makes something similar each year.

And because I don't believe that seasonal beers should be limited to specific seasons, Boskeun, an Easter beer by De Dolle. It took a few goes at pouring: not a gusher but it was very keen to build big pillows of foam over the hazy golden body. There's no mistaking the 10% ABV from its hot honey flavour, given extra welly by a peppery piquancy from the yeast. I get burst of cloves and candy canes as well, so very little would stop them from dressing the bunny on the label as Santa Claus and calling it a Christmas beer. Anyway, Happy Easter!

Sticking with the same brewery, their Oerbier Special Reserva 2010 is one I've been saving for a special occasion. This'll do. It's a murky brown-ish red ale, claiming 13% ABV on the label and quite possibly a bit more after several years of hanging around in my attic. There's a punchy woody Rodenbach-esque sourness from the aroma, with added autolytic umami notes beneath it and a ghost of what used to be sweet summer fruit. It's not quite as complex to taste: sour at the front and then fading away on dark liquorice, roasted grain and a distinct Burgundy vinousness. The light texture is the best bit, keeping this as refreshing as a kir royale. Special indeed.

Something big, dark and strong to finish: Malheur's Novice Black Tripel, though it is the weakest of the set at a mere 8.5% ABV. Held up to the light it's a translucent brown rather than black, though the off-white head could have been transplanted from a daycent pint of stout. And it pulls the very clever trick of the best black IPAs of tasting exactly like the purported style. In this case there's all the heady ecclesiastical spice and smooth honey and candy of quality golden tripel, with maybe just a dash of liquorice or tar as a nod to the colour. Amazingly, despite appearances, it's incredibly clean, each flavour vibrant and distinct. The end result is very drinkable; perhaps even a little too casual for a special winter occasion.

Nevertheless, trooper that I am I'll be keeping the Belgian theme going later with a bottle of Chimay Bleu as usual with my turkey, a 2011 vintage this year. Have a good one and see you next week for, amongst other things, my 2014 Golden Pints. That's when we really find out who's been naughty and nice all year.

22 December 2014

This bottle of Electric India arrived from BrewDog after I visited the brewery last August. Thanks guys! It's a 6.5% ABV saison, hopped with Nelson Sauvin and Amarillo. First appearances are innocent enough: a pale and perfectly clear pilsnerish yellow and a modest topping of white foam. The aroma is where the magic starts to happen: that very slightly funky saison fruitiness backed by pineapple and passionfruit. Its texture is quite light, with just a hint of slickness indicating that it's not a quaffer. The flavour really turns up the elements previously introduced in the aroma: intensely pithy mango and a dash of mouthwatering lime, neither of which I'd associate particularly with the listed hops but there you go. Some dry gunpowder spicing stops the sweet fruit from completely dominating the taste. I like this, and prefer it to the rather simpler Magic Stone Dog hoppy saison, but 33cls was enough. All those mangoes get to be a bit much after a while.

India Pale Weizen is a newer offering which I found on sale in Martin's of Fairview. This was brewed in association with Weihenstephan so immediately invites comparison with the Schneider/Brooklyn Hopfen-Weisse, an all-time favourite beer of mine. This is lighter at 6.2% ABV and is truer to the wheat beer style than IPA, though perhaps closer to wit than weizen: the yeast character is dry and spicy rather than fruity. There's even an element of orange peel, which I'm guessing is from the American hops, but there are no IPA bells and whistles here. The aroma is more of those gentle spices and there's none of the rounded warming weissbier character that makes the Schneider hoppy weizen so approachable. While perfectly drinkable, India Pale Weizen doesn't really show off the talents of the two breweries that created it. Less than the sum of its partners, you might say.

For the season that's in it, BrewDog has re-released the Christmas seasonals it had out last year. It was one of last year's batch of Santa Paws that I found in the bargain bucket of Brewery Lane in Temple Bar back in October, just before the best-before was up. This is a 4.5% ABV black beer, pouring headless. They've billed it as a Scotch ale but the clean liquorice and molasses combination in the flavour reminds me far more of Czech tmavý. Apparently there's heather honey in here but I couldn't taste it, nor did I miss it. It's mildly sticky but overall very pleasant, simple drinking.

The companion beer to Santa Paws is Hoppy Christmas and this showed up at a tasting in Probus Wines last month, organised by BrewDog's local importer Four Corners. It's a 7.2% ABV IPA, single-hopped with Simcoe and pale orange in colour. This is definitely one to drink fresh, the aroma a massive wave of funky dank. Rather than big bitterness it's juicy and zesty, bursting with all sorts of citrus. In classic American style there's no heat generated by the alcohol but there's definitely an oilyness from all the lovely hops. Gorgeous now, but it won't be quite such a bargain in ten months' time.

Last beer for this round-up is another that came directly as a freebie from the brewery. My only previous experience of BrewDog's Abstrakt series was no. 3 back in 2011. We're up to AB:16 now, a quadrupel at 10.6% ABV with added coffee beans. I thought there was a touch of Flemish red in the aroma, a gentle woody sourness amongst the dark fruit. It's much more of a quadrupel on tasting, however: damsons and plump juicy raisins, plus a bit of treacle and brown sugar for sweetness. The coffee is a mere ghost of a flavour, flitting past and barely discernible, though adding a sweet cappuccino complexity to the whole. Like the Electric India we kicked off on, this is light and drinkable despite the high strength and full flavour. I'd sort of intended it as a fireside sipper to bring this blog into Christmas proper but I'm not sure it really works for that. While I should never complain about a beer that leaves room for another one after it, there's something not quite right about super-premium session quadrupel.

18 December 2014

Two late-2014 additions to the Irish brewing scene in today's post, both coming out of the traps with a prodigious range of first-run bottled beers.

Co. Monaghan's first brewery (for a while, anyway) opened recently, calling itself Brehon Brewhouse. I was pleasantly surprised to find an early release, their straight-up Irish red, in my local supermarket. Killanny Red Ale is 4.5% ABV and pours a lot darker than one might expect -- almost brown, depending on the light. I'm guessing a generous amount of roasted barley has gone in here as it smells very crisp and grainy, tasting dry to the point of being burnt. Yes there's a little summer berry, but it's a tartness which, combined with the ashen dryness, makes me wonder if something is happening fermentationwise that is not as the brewer intended. I'm not normally the sort to go out of my way to drink Irish red but I'd prefer a bit more fruit and toffee than I'm getting in this.

Keeping to the more timid styles, Brehon Blonde is next, a modest 4.3% ABV. There's an attractive reddish cast to its blondness and the bottle conditioning produces lots of fizz but I poured carefully and a clear glass was my reward. Lots of raisin-rich garibaldi on the nose, though a distinct musty oxidised staleness too. And all of that is there in the flavour too: dry, mouldy sackcloth to begin, a flash of citrus and then more dust and dry rot on the end. A clean, light blonde seems to be a bit beyond the brewing skills of Brehon at this stage.

The range starts to liven up with Stony Grey India Pale Ale. Surprisingly, this is the first beer I can think of named in honour of one of Ireland's many many piss artist poets and is a fitting 6% ABV. A ring of orange rust around the bottleneck was an initial cause for concern but the aroma put me at ease: zesty satsuma and pungent spicy liquorice. There's less punch in the flavour and more of a caramel sweetness, plus a weird savoury meat-like edge. The lightly citric hops arrive late creating an overall sensation of... of... well, of duck à l'orange. This beer tastes of duck à l'orange. That's a first.

Last and darkest and strongest from Brehon is Shanco Dubh, a bruiser of a porter at 7.7% ABV. I came across this at a pre-Christmas tasting hosted by Bord Bia where it was poured by James of the Vanguard Beer Collective. That musty thing is back, but here it works more as a feature than a bug. There's a huge amount of coffee, caramel and dark chocolate behind it and it helps dry them out, while accentuating the roast elements. The end result is highly complex, but balances out on the enjoyable side of odd.

Wicklow Wolf is based in Bray and very soon after opening the doors had five different beers on the market.

Possibly the most intriguing of the range is Locavore Blonde, a 4.8% ABV ale made using only fresh hops from the brewery's own farm. It's at the dark end of the colour scale and while its hop aroma reflects the amount of sunlight and warmth the plants probably got (not much), it's not all golden syrup and cereal: there's a hint of lemons and herbs in there. The lemon element is very pronounced on tasting, even to a puckering extent, with a more serious waxy bitterness behind it and a smattering of spices. Overall this is a pretty decent blonde ale -- it could stand to be smoother, but there's not a thing wrong with it. That it's all done with Irish-grown hops is pretty impressive. Comparisons with the other Irish hop beer, White Gypsy's Emerald, are inevitable but they're very different creatures. Though stronger, Emerald is lighter and zestier, with lots of bittersweet apple in with the lemons. It's refreshing quenching and easy drinking while Locavore is a thinking drinker's blonde. Importantly for the local ingredients movement, both stand on their own as beers, not mere novelties.

In place of a red there's Wicklow Wolf American Amber, discovered on draught at The Norseman last month. Once again I'm out with my colour charts and declaring this more brown than red while also noting a worrying lack of aroma. It's 5% ABV and very thin with it, failing to deliver the rich fruity candy thing that I expect from the style. The hops are all hiding in the flavour, but they present as more of a herbal element, with a powerful bitterness, followed quickly by traditional Irish red notes of crystal malt toffee and dry roast. It's all a bit severe for my taste, especially for a style that should be fun and accessible. I'm not doubting the quality of the hops used, nor their quantity, but this beer just isn't put together the way I like.

On to 57 The Headline to find the next draught one: Wicklow Wolf Kentucky Common. No kvetching about style here as it's the first and only Kentucky Common I've ever met. It's 4.8% ABV and a dark murky brown with red highlights. After a sip I'd place it somewhere on the schwarzbier to brown ale spectrum: it has the gassy dryness and clean lagery finish of the former with the sweeter coffee of the latter. Elements of Bavarian dunkel creep in as it warms: a growing liquorice aroma and a sweet-sour liquorice taste in the finish. It's certainly interesting, but again I found it a little stark and uncompromising for my taste.

The final two I bought in bottled form from DrinkStore. Wicklow Wolf IPA is a hefty beast at 6.3% ABV. Injudicious pouring put an overly large head on my glass, and underneath it a red-amber coloured beer, awash with quite large floaty bits. There's no messing about with the aroma: a big, fresh, lemon-and-lime juice burst, almost enough to make your eyes water. The Simcoe and Cascade combine nicely with the lightly caramelised malt on tasting to create a citric and grassy finish to the flavour profile, but before that reward it's necessary to stand still and let the acrid bitterness slap your palate around a bit. There are some earthy, clangy ferric notes in here as well, but at least the yeast is kept out of the picture. It's intense stuff, the napalm hopping made extra effective by a thick unctuous mouthfeel. Not one for hop lightweights, or those who demand girly tropical fruit flavours or American-style toffee sweetness. Instead, it's a classically no-nonsense grown-up IPA, and I quite enjoyed it for that.
We finish on Black Perle Porter, this one a more modest 4.8% ABV. It looks wholesome as it pours: thick, dark and forming a dense tan head. The nose is full-on espresso, shading towards moccha but the flavour is all cocoa to begin: the bitterness of very dark chocolate and even that faintly powdery feel. The roast comes into play later, turned up to a somewhat charred, black-toast-like degree, but not unpleasantly so. There's no indication on the bottle of where the name comes from, but I'm guessing that Perle hops were involved somewhere along the way, not that there's much of a hop taste in this one. Overall another very good effort, balancing complexity with drinkability rather well.

I guess the lesson from this lot is that dark beers and IPAs are the way to go. Maybe breweries will stop making substandard reds and blondes when people stop buying them. Always drink responsibly.

15 December 2014

Old Father Time is oiling down his scythe, ready to take a swing at 2014 and bring the year to close. I'm left with a scattering of beer tasting notes gathered over the year that I've yet to commit to this blog and most of which will have to wait until 2015. For this post I'm pulling together an assortment of Irish ones, mostly to give posterity flavour of what was happening at this point in the big bang of modern Irish microbrewing.

Red is something of a theme, and rumours of the death of Irish red ale have been greatly exaggerated. The slightly hoppier amber ale twist is also highly fashionable and Mayo newcomer Reel Deel have launched with an amber ale as their first. Irish Blond is a sort-of in-joke, because it's not blonde, it's red. Ahahahaha. Um. What we have here is a pretty decent fist of an American style amber pouring a lovely shade of chestnut red. The aroma is lightly fruity, combining old school white lemonade and sherbet lemons. There's a lot of quality English bitter about the flavour, a crisp and thirst-quenching tannic element, some spices, but also the rounder exotic fruit of new world hops. It's maybe a bit too dry for first-rate American-style amber ale *cough*Amber-Ella*cough* but it's a very well made beer and one I would happily quaff lots more of.

Dublin's Stone Barrel brewing are coming to the end of their contract brewing phase and are hoping to have their own production brewery in the New Year. Red Mist is their second UK-brewed bottled beer and is an amber ale of a modest and sessionable 4.2% ABV. It packs a lot of complexity in there, being another sherbet-smelling one but showing bags of toffee in the flavour, in keeping with the dark copper body. The sweetness is balanced deftly by pockets of green bitterness, for that hop-studded candy effect I always enjoy in amber ale.

There's less of that sort of thing in Clanconnel McGrath's No. 6 which I chanced upon in The Waterloo in Dublin. Their Saturday night €4 bottle offer is great for some sociable exploring. This is another dark red amber ale but the malt is winning the aroma, showing in a rather musty burlap smell. There's crunchy grain in the flavour as well, though the hops are more assertive here. Rather than American citrus you get a genteel lavender and talcum which adds up to a sweet and slightly twee beer. Think granny's oatmeal cookies. That she eats in the bath.

I'm guessing West Mayo brewery were going for more of a traditional red style with Clew Bay Sunset which I found on tap in The Norseman back in October but this is a weird mutant variant. It's thin enough and fizzy enough, but is over-the-top sweet, with the fake fruit flavour of red lemonade. The aroma is pure butterscotch and the finish saccharine-sweet to the point of tasting metallic. It's the awful candy concoction of an especially vindictive Willy Wonka. Avoid.

More recently (yesterday) in The Norseman they were pouring Yule, a Christmas beer for White Hag's first Christmas. It's 7.2% ABV, mostly headless, and a murky red-amber colour. I'd say it's quite highly attenuated as the texture is thin even though the alcoholic weight is very apparent. There's a powerful red fruit flavour with all the sugar of ripe rasberries and strawberries plus the acidic sharpness of both. I'm definitely not of the opinion that a Christmas beer should taste Christmassy but this one has me wondering why a beer called Yule conjures up strawberries and cream in front of the tennis.

Meanwhile, at the supermarket, Solas is one of the brands Rye River brews for Tesco, the more traditional of the two. Solas Red is a classic dark Irish red: copper shading towards brown. The head is generous to begin with but collapses quickly, while the nose is a charming mix of warmth and red fruit, like fresh cherry pie, including the slight sourness. It's rather plainer to drink: lots of simple dry roast and a highly attenuated thinness. There's no hop character and not much malt either, not even the caramel that any reasonable human might expect from Irish red. It's 4.3% ABV but drinks like a cheapy supermarket own-brand half that strength.

So, apprehension going into Solas Stout. It certainly looks the part, pouring thickly and nearly opaque with a loose-bubbled ivory head. There's a rich and sweet aroma, though it's slightly phenolic, but not in a bad way -- sort of smoky. The flavour is at once classic Irish stout, but also quite unusual: there's lots of dry roast, more than a hint of caramel, burnt edges and a sour tang. It exists somewhere in the middle of a circle marked by bottled Guinness, Knockmealdown and O'Hara's Leann Folláin and is beautifully complex for something that's just 4.5% ABV. I really like it, and it's great to see this sort of interesting full-flavoured Irish stout hitting the mainstream via Tesco.

New lagers are a bit thin on the ground. Who wants to drink lager, after all? Cumberland Breweries from northern England do, and have set up a satellite brewery called Station Works just outside Newry where they're making Finn Irish Craft Lager. It's 4.5% ABV and comes in 33cl bottles decorated in hexagons, because giants and that. It's perfectly clear and very pale, with a suspicious but not unattractive burst of green apples in the aroma. It's very clean to taste, however: lightly carbonated for moussey texture and with light notes of grapefruit and lime balanced against a sweet biscuit graininess. There's a near-sour bite on the end which may be down to a technical flaw but which I rather enjoyed. It's maybe not a session lager, but works well as a refresher or aperitif.

A similar bite is at work in Carden's Wild Ale by White Gypsy, discovered by chance on the beer engine at Alfie Byrne's the other week. The aroma of this red-gold ale is a kind of lemon sourness rather than the full-on acetic of deliberately soured beer. The body is quite thin and the flavour offers a mild combination of pale biscuits, brown sugar and light lemon-and-lime. I'm left a little confused as to what it's supposed to be, and at 5% ABV I expected a lot more of everything.

I only managed to catch one of White Gypsy's pair of draught winter specials, namely A Winter's Ale,a title seemingly abandoned by Eight Degrees now after a couple of years of disuse. This "German Pale Ale" promises an intriguing mix of Belgian yeast and ultra-hip German hop varieties Polaris and Mandarina Bavaria. Conveniently for me, The 108 in Rathgar had it on tap so I nipped over one quiet Sunday afternoon to give it a go. It's another odd beast, pouring a perfect clear garnet colour with an aroma very typical of Belgian dubbel, despite a mere 5.7% ABV. There's a double impact on tasting: the heavy brown-banana esters of the yeast and then a sharp, medicinal, mentholyptus effect from the Polaris. I'd been hoping for some rounded fruit tones from the Mandarina but I'm guessing the yeast esters have buried all that. A long menthol burn finishes it off gradually. It's a strange beer: invigorating and like nothing I've ever tasted before. But it's just a little too hot and sharp to be friendly.

Just one token IPA for this post. It's hard to believe people are still drinking this quaint and outmoded style. Bran & Sceolan is one of the White Hag range that I missed at the RDS back in September but seems to be part of the small core range the brewery is selling in Ireland. There's something classically American about the amber colour, the 7.2% ABV and the big hit of mango and peach in the flavour. There's a certain amount of residual crystal malt sweetness, but not so much that the hops suffer; if anything the tropical fruit notes are emphasised by the extra sugar. It's nicely balanced, clean flavoured and very drinkable showing very little sign of how strong it is. The hop acidity lasts well into the finish, coating the tongue, so I suspect it may be a bit of a palate killer, but what a way to go! Another bravo performance from the Sligo lads.

And a handful of dark beers to finish on: St. Mel's first seasonal is Raisin & Oatmeal Stout which showed up in bottles at 57 The Headline. Sharp, dry, crisp roast rules supreme in this 4.5%-er. The label employs the words "vinous" and "port" but you need either a finely-tuned palate or an active imagination to spot them. There isn't even the smoothness that I understand is part of the package with oatmeal, whether that's down to the low ABV or the bottle-conditioned high fizz. Towards the end I got a tiny hint of dark fruit, but not enough to really mark this out as anything other than a decently put-together dry Irish session stout.

Trouble made a much better fist of fruited Christmas stout. Dash Away was on cask for one thing: no upsetting fizz, just luscious smoothness, helped no doubt by 5.7% ABV. Chocolate and cherries are the added ingredients, the former making a huge contribution to the flavour, the latter just a small smattering of the glacé variety. Amongst the warming sweetness there's a mildly spicy edge as well, generated by the roasted grains and yeast, I'd guess. The finish is quick, making it nicely glugable, setting up the next pint. The keg version is simpler and less rich but does preserve a lot of the black forest gateaux complexity.

I found a very similar flavour profile in Carrig Winter Ale, part of an excellent seasonal line-up in The Bull & Castle at the moment. It's dark and dense, and slightly stronger at 6.5% ABV. Chocolate features in a big way, sweet and creamy, while behind it there's a confection of mild winter spices: could be cinnamon, could be nutmeg, but nothing particularly assertive or distinctive. This mince pie effect is even more noticeable in the aroma. As a filling winter warming it's absolutely spot on though the weight and sweetness do mean a pint is a little like consuming an entire selection box in one go. Not a session beer, then.

Time for a palate cleanser. Fortunately JW Sweetman had tapped a cask (possibly the first) of Barrelhead Dry Stout. I suspect that this is a very simply made version of the style: it has the same sort of crisp roast and creaminess of any Irish dry stout. But the natural conditioning adds dimensions to the flavour, with notes of sandalwood and cranberry sneaking in. It's a little watery at heart, reflecting perhaps the sub-4% ABV, but overall a damn decent beer and a great example of how cask conditioning can benefit a stout. Cheers to Steve for the heads-up on this one.

Lastly the second beer from the Blackstairs brand: Dark Fiery Porter. It's 5% ABV and brewed with oatmeal, ginger and jalapeños. What's not to like in that? There's a density to the appearance, jet black with a tan coloured head. For all that, it's a lightly textured beer, low on fizz and smooth without being thick. The spicing is gentle and mannerly with the ginger present more in a candied way, as a sweetness. There's very little sign of the peppers, maybe just a slight fruity pop in the aroma. The end result is a nicely complex warming winter beer, proof that you can get great results with wacky ingredients without the beer itself turning out wacky.

Phew. Bit of a scattergun, that. But it reflects how trying to keep up with Irish beer feels these days. I've deliberately left out several groups of beers and I'll get to those before the clock strikes midnight on the 31st.

11 December 2014

A handful of beers from the cutting edge of English brewing today, arriving courtesy of Richard.

I'd never heard of Ellenberg's Brewery before, a short lived London-based operation that suspended production back in the spring. They made a dark smoky wheat beer which they called Ellenberg's Brewery Dark Smoky Wheat Beer, 6.5% ABV and claiming authentic German stylings.

It's an unattractive murky brown, but then weissbier is gonna murk. I really liked the aroma, all warming bacon and peaty phenols: thoroughly cosy and comforting. The flavour is a very clean slice of well-smoked ham, the meatiness accentuated by the full mouthfeel. For weissbier fruit esters you have to add the lees at the bottom of the bottle, and even then the smoked flavours are still very much in control. It's good that they don't wrestle the esters for dominance, a factor that I think spoils Schlenkerla's Weizen. Overall, this is a beer I enjoyed spending time with and I hope it will return to production at some stage.

Siren I have heard of, and tasted a few of their beers, and never met a bad one. I had also seen much chatter about Limoncello IPA, their collaboration with Mikkeller and Hill Farmstead, so was delighted to find it sitting at my kitchen table. There's 9.1% ABV to contend with, the beer pouring a dark cloudy orange and smelling powerfully of waxy lemon peel. I was wary.

The first thing that struck me is the heat. This beer makes no effort whatsoever to hide its strength, and just as you get used to the boozy vapours you get hit with sharp, punchy Jif Lemon, finishing on an almost burning acidity. But it's one of those super-intense beers you get used to after a couple of sips. The busy flavours calm down and mellow out. I was expecting it to get sickly and undrinkable, y'know, like limoncello does, but instead it settles into a fluffy, mouth-watering lemon merangue pie sort of effect, which meant it was possible to drink a lot more of it than I thought I could. Someone else can answer the question of where the Citra and Sorachi Ace hops stop and the actual lemon zest begins -- I really couldn't see the join.

And finally Summer Wine Brewery, abandoning their angular modernist label style for a more friendly, jaunty look. Padrino is billed as an "imperial affogato stout" and is 9% ABV.

The aroma doesn't set it off to a good start, being rather dry and stale, like old cold coffee. Plenty of dry coffee roastedness in the flavour too, but here it fights it out with an intense sugary mocha sweetness which builds to saccharine and latterly turns unpleasantly metallic. Its texture is as full as you might expect and the end result is more like chewing coffee grounds than drinking a beer. Aside from the added coffee there is little other flavour complexity and none of what makes imperial stout such a great style. While Siren's Limoncello could be regarded as a poster child for adding odd things to beer, Padrino is more of a warning notice.

08 December 2014

A rapid sequel to my post a few months back about how the Wallace group of authentic Italian eateries have finally warmed to quality Italian beers. While I was still getting my head around them being there at all, the chain organised an Italian craft beer festival, Quartiere In Fermento, in mid-November. It takes an authentic Mediterranean attitude to organise an outdoor beer festival in Dublin this time of year.

On the day, an alcove on the Millennium Walkway was designated as the venue and a makeshift bar set up with five breweries exhibiting: Almond 22, Foglie d'Erba, Montegioco, LoverBeer and Barley. I didn't try everything on offer and I'll say straight away that the best beer available was LoverBeer's Papessa, one I know of old. From the other selection, I had:

Garbagnina. Not the most attractive of names by Montegioco. This is a cloudy pink cherry beer at 5.3% ABV, the flavour an odd mix of sweet red fruit (though not necessarily cherry) and strong winter herbs -- eucalyptus and sage. The two elements mesh along well together and make for an odd but simple and enjoyable beer. There's an actual sage variant, clary, in Montegioco's Rex Grue but I wasn't able to taste it. It's a 5.6% ABV pale ale with lots of lovely juicy jaffa orange notes.

Much as I like the style, it's rare that a tripel really impresses me, but Barley's Toccadibò was one such. It's typically pale and cloudy, but with a clean flavour profile more reminiscent of a strong Belgian blonde ale than tripel. What makes it stand out is the hopping: mango and pineapple notes, given added warmth by 8.4% ABV, which I guess is fairly modest for the style. Almond 22, meanwhile, had a peppercorn beer called Pink IPA which promised big on the hops -- Saphir and Nelson Sauvin -- but didn't quite deliver. The pepper imparts an enjoyable dry bite but that's really all that happens. It's not even pink, more a hazy IPA orange.

Two from Foglie d'Erba to finish. Babél at 4.8% ABV is the lightest beer I drank but also one of the most intensely complex. It arrived from the keg a perfect clear gold and I lost track of the hops used after writing down Simcoe, Citra and Tettnanger. They create a massive perfumed golden syrup effect: floral and fruity but without being sweet. A solid kick of old-world bitterness brings it down to earth and balances it. Top new discovery of the event for me, and several other attendees, was Hot Night at the Village, the same brewery's porter. It's 5.5% ABV and is wonderfully simple and drinkable with just the right amount of cocoa again avoiding being sweet but actually quite refreshing, the way good porter should be, even on a cold winter's evening on the north bank of the Liffey.

Congratulations to the organisers for running such a daring and fun event. It is customary on such occasions to write that I hope it returns bigger and better, but really I'd be very happy with exactly the same again.

05 December 2014

Ding has helpfully set out some options for this month's Session, on the topic of where we see ourselves within the beer 'scene' (his scarequotes). One of them leapt out at me straight away and it wasn't the capitalisation that did it: Are you JUST a consumer? That's pretty much it for me. I'm the guy at the bar with a fiver looking for something nice to drink. As such, I believe this makes me the most important person on the beer scene, alongside all the other consumers who pay for breweries to stay in business. We, or at least I, ask for nothing but good beer, priced reasonably. Our most powerful weapon against the opposite is to not go there or drink that again. Everything else on the 'scene' is decoration.

I needed a bit more than a fiver to secure a pint of Gnéas Dublin Dark Ale, it was all of €5.60 in 57 The Headline, which is high for something of only 4.2% ABV. I guess the fact that brand owners Kerry Brewing are getting it made at Rascal's adds the extra few cents. It's one of a pair, though I haven't seen the pale ale anywhere yet.

Calling a beer after the Irish word for sex does raise certain expectations. One of which, to put not too fine a point on it, is that it wouldn't be as dry as it is. But crisp dry roasted grain is the centrepiece of the dark garnet coloured ale, enhanced even further by the carbonic sparkle. It's a severe and pointy-edged beer when served cold, and while it softens a little as it warms and flattens, the flavour doesn't get any more complex or interesting.

My place on the beer scene, where this one is concerned, is using my next fiver to order something else. There's never a shortage of options at The Headline.

03 December 2014

There's a furious looking parrot on my bottle of Papegaei tripel, its rage sufficient to permeate the glass and cause the beer to foam violently as soon as the cap came off. It's a dark gold colour and surprisingly unfizzy, given what went before. Though a reasonable 8% ABV it's very heavy and the alcohol heat is the centrepiece of the flavour. Where you might expect honey or spice complexities there's only a very unsubtle honeydew sweetness which adds a sickliness to both taste and aroma.

This is a beer with few redeeming features, then. It appears to be the only product of "Browerij Verstraete", though contract brewed by someone else. In Belgium it seems that nothing can stand in the way of a man's dream to have his name on a mediocre tripel with a disgruntled tropical bird on the label.

01 December 2014

The current American fashion for session IPA has started making itself felt in earnest in Ireland now. Following on the heels of Founders's exemplary All Day IPA, a slew of new ones from familiar US breweries. Getting through them in a single session seemed to be the sensible approach. I chose a drinking order, entirely subjectively, of ascending brewery trustworthiness.

First up is Easy IPA from east-coasters Flying Dog. "Bright" is the initial impression here: a white Ralph Steadman label, behind which I found a clear, sparkling, pale yellow beer of 4.7% ABV. The aroma is sharp citrus, lemons in particular, though there's a thicker resin element and even a little crystal malt toffee. The texture is quite thin and the carbonation soft, which I guess is part of the spec: very easy drinking. Again in keeping with the style, the flavour is assertive without being overpowering, mouthwatering mandarin to begin, though turning a slightly metallic harsh bitterness towards the end and finishing abruptly. A perfectly passable beer and not something I'd turn my nose up at in a casual drinking situation, but I didn't feel any impulse to reach for another.
Sierra Nevada, if my beer history is correct, was the world's first brewery to learn what hops are for, so I had high expectations for Nooner, their new 4.8% ABV session IPA. It's a richer gold than Flying Dog's Easy though offers much less aroma, and what's there is a spiky, grassy Germanic vibe. It's surprisingly lacking in the flavour department, laying on lots of acidic bitterness over stale biscuit malt. There's maybe a hint of citrus, and more of that grassy spice, but this really reminded me far more of a pale German bock than a Californian IPA. The texture is spot-on, so there's that, but I'm really not feeling the love for Nooner.

Which brings us to Loose Leaf, by Colorado's Odell, a brewery which turns out consistently brilliant hop-forward beers. This has the lowest ABV of the set, at 4.5%, and is another pale one. The obligatory texture assessment is once again positive: it's very softly carbonated and the head is almost fluffy. Of hop fireworks, however, there are none. Perhaps some watermelon crispness and lemon sherbet candy, but the heart of this beer is just water. An uncharacteristic false move by Odell here.

And just for purposes of calibration I had a Founder's All Day IPA on standby to finish the tasting. It still has the beatings of all of these imitators -- strongly bitter, full bodied and with all the complexity of beers far stronger than its 4.7% ABV. There's no sense that it's in any way compromised, that it's a trade-down from "real" IPA. I think that a self-effacing approach to session IPA may be some of what's behind how the other breweries missed a beat on the style.

29 November 2014

One of the more momentous events of the past year was the arrival of British pub chain JD Wetherspoon to Ireland. The original surprise announcement was made in August 2013 and news came through by the end of the year that the first branch would be in the well-heeled south Dublin suburb of Blackrock. So this wasn't going to be one of those Wild West Wetherspoons, run down and gum-stained, that one occasionally encounters across the water. Though they didn't make it explicit, I suspect the intention was for this to be both pilot fish and flagship all under one enormous roof.

The doors of The Three Tun Tavern opened in early July, by which stage news of the next phase of the expansion was trickling out. More Irish Wetherspoons are expected in Dublin, Cork and further abroad next year, and the second Dublin outlet opens three stops down the DART line in Dún Laoghaire later this month. For the moment, however, The Three Tun Tavern remains one of a kind.

It was August by the time I made it along, late afternoon on a sunny Friday. When it's quiet you really get a feel for the size of the place: a vast wooden floored bearpit with a long bar at the centre and more secluded carpeted areas on different levels off to the sides. I had a slight awww moment when I noticed the silent TV screens were set to RTÉ News Now rather than Sky, as would be normal in the UK. Lots of staff were milling about, far more than there were customers. I guess the rotas were still in the planning phase. A drink, then.

Twelve handpumps makes it easily the caskiest pub in the country, though the everyday selection isn't really up to much: rather mainstream humdrum large-regional British ales, the sort of stuff that the company can pile very high and sell exceedingly cheap. I thought that Adnams Ghost Ship would be a safe bet, having always loved the bottled version but it just felt tired and sickly on cask. Not the refresher I was after that particular afternoon.

Having decided there was nothing on cask I wanted and moving over to the keg taps, the first one to catch my interest was DNA, that oddity from Charles Wells made with a dash of Dogfish Head IPA. My pint arrived a cheery clear copper colour but dear lord it was cold. As the condensation cascaded onto my table that's when I noticed the pub doesn't put beermats out, though they are available. Once it was warm enough for me to taste something I found it quite a subtle and refreshing beer. Its American heritage is there in the sherbety fruit tones, though there's nothing you'd actually call bitter or citrus, and then there's a rising caramel aftermath meaning that it soon starts tasting as brown as it looks. DNA offers a few seconds of enjoyment but just gets boring after that. I understand that the recipe has been revised since the summer so your mileage will obviously vary, if you haven't already been put off it.

I had time for one more pint and opted for Revisionist Lager, holding out possibly naive hopes for Marston's craftified series of beers. This is medium gold and the point-of-sale material promises dry-hopping with Admiral and Boadicea hops. I couldn't wait to get stuck in. Ow my teeth! So very, very cold. I suppose with a lager it's part of the spec, a reasonable demand of the customer base. I cupped my hands around the glass and gingerly took another sip. There's definitely some hop action up front: a sort of chew-sweet artificial fruitiness, but there's not much behind it. No malt, for one thing, which perhaps isn't that surprising at a mere 4% ABV. I kept searching for more taste, letting the beer warm, until notes of butter began creeping in and I knew I was on to a loser. I drained the glass and went on my way.

I wasn't expecting to be back as soon as October, thinking that the chain wouldn't bother with including Ireland in the yearly cycle of special beer festivals. But they did, and on Friday 17th October the first beers from the Wetherspoon International Real-Ale Festival went on sale in Dublin. I really enjoyed my time at this event in Belfast last year so headed straight for Blackrock early in the afternoon of day two.

Just five to pick from, and my first choice was the Hook Norton / Brew Moon Real Antipodean, a 4% ABV golden ale. That's getting into the airy upper reaches for English beer of this style but this was definitely rather thinner than I expected. Still, a lovely spiced orange aroma opened its account and there's a similar sort of fruit flavour, lots of light sherbet and then a cheeky invigorating bitterness right at the end. The hops are Motueka and Wakatu and really didn't have much that was typically New Zealandish about them, but they still worked nicely together. It's another one to finish quickly however: bath salts and orange cordial started to come out as it warmed. Just as well I had more to try.

Meanwhile, the wife opted for the strongest beer on the menu: Freak of Nature double IPA, brewed by Bateman's and based on an original by North Carolina's Wicked Weed brewery. 7.5% ABV and a gorgeous rich gold-amber colour. What could possibly go wrong here? Everything. Aside from the forgiveable powerful alcohol heat there was a massive hit of phenols: pure TCP yuck coating everything. Where it was possible to taste the beer underneath it was all sweet and syrupy. The bottom line is no fresh American hop loveliness, just anguish and despair. Was the problem in the recipe, the brewing or the serving? I don't know. The total trooper I married did manage to get through the entire half pint, however. What a hero.

After that I lost my nerve on risking whole pints and opted for the, admittedly wonderful, three thirds for the price of a pint. We settled in front of the real fire while I set about them.

On the left of the picture, the first was another down-under collaboration: Two Birds Golden Ale, by the Melbourne brewery of the same name, brewed at Banks's. It's a reddish sort of gold and that's probably its most interesting feature. A bit of golden syrup malt, maybe, but otherwise harmless and bland. Neither bells nor whistles in JW Lees John Willie's 100 (far right) either. This is brown bitter of the very brownest sort, a one dimensional toffee pudding that had nothing wrong with it, but I was glad I only had a small glass to work through all the same. And in the middle Abbaye Blonde brewed at Shepherd Neame with input from Belgium's Val-Dieu brewery. This 6%-er was pretty good, all biscuits and bubblegum, sprinkled with honey and cereal. No Belgian stickiness, just good, clean, drinkable golden ale.

My advice to myself for these Wetherspoon collaboration sets is to look out for the ones brewed at Adnams. They tend to be a cut above the others. There was only one on this list, a collaboration with SixPoint called Bklyn Bitter. The pumpclip was present but flagged as "coming soon" and the helpful barman said he expected it to be pouring later that evening. We were in no rush. A wander up the street brought us to The Dark Horse where Goodbye Blue Monday was pouring on cask, throwing all of the Wetherspoon offerings far into the shade. We returned to The Three Tun Tavern just after six to find the afternoon's families had cleared out and the place was now heaving with determined evening drinkers. 6pm on a Saturday seems to be the time when Blackrock turns up its rugby shirt collar and heads to the pub. We found a space in a corner and I brought us two pints of Bklyn.
It didn't let me down. Maybe a little over-egged at 5.5% ABV while tasting far more safe and sessionable, this is rose gold in colour and smells enticingly of sulphur and black tea. It's tannins a-go-go the way Adnams does best, more a lemon tea effect on tasting, when the hopping kicks in, and hitting the back of the throat and roof of the mouth with a tannic dryness. I'd have been happy if that's all it did but there was also big rich mango juiciness and a dusting of incense spice. Phwoar. This one was well worth waiting for.

So, clearly a mixed bag at The Three Tuns, but hooray for choice. I doubt I'll be making regular forays out to Blackrock, Dún Laoghaire or Swords just to go to Wetherspoon, and even if and when they open in the centre of town I can't see it becoming a destination for a night out. But just a few pints of something of Bklyn's calibre per year will do me. Welcome to Dublin, JD.

(This is my second #beerylongreads post in the current round. For the full list of contributions, see Boak and Bailey's blog here.)